Mr. Veal reached his office nearly two hours late, and one of his office boys was instantly discharged for asking him whom he wanted to see. Indeed, in a new suit of violent black-and-white checks, and with a crush hat of velvety substance, he was almost unrecognizable. As he passed through the filing department a hush fell over the young ladies there. His secretary, looking nervously from her corner outside the private office, felt a tingling scherzo run up and down the keyboard of her spine. Never before had she seen Mr. Veal wear flowers in his buttonhole, and as he swung the door of his office behind him, she sniffed the vibrating air. In the rich wake of cigar-fragrance always exhaled by her employer her sharp nostrils detected a new tang—the sweet scent of mignonette. Heavens! Was Mr. Veal using perfume?
Miss Stafford was an acute young woman. She had long been waiting the adroit moment to push her employer for a raise, which was indeed due her. She determined that this was the psychological day. When the sign of the Ram is ascendant in the zodiac, let employers tremble. This is when even the most faithful and long-enduring wage-earner dreams seditiously of a fatter manila envelope. Miss Stafford's typewriter had sung like a zither for a number of years, she had orchestrated many curious harmonies on it, and now she had reached the point where she was almost as indispensable to the business as Mr. Veal himself. She was carrying what the efficiency dopesters call the peak load.
The buzzer buzzed, and Miss Stafford hastened to the private office, nerving herself to throw cantilevers across the Rubicon.
To her surprise, Mr. Veal, instead of sitting glowering over the morning mail, was standing by the window, throwing a paper-weight in the air and failing to catch it. The sunlight blazing through the large windows seemed to surround his emphatic clothes with a prismatic fringe. To her amazement, instead of the customary brief and reserved greeting, he said:
“Hullo, Miss Stafford. Great weather, eh? Sorry I'm late, but I just couldn't keep my schedule this morning. Went out to buy myself some golf clubs. I think I'd better take up the game, don't you?”
He made a swing at an imaginary golf ball, and slipped on the polished floor, nearly falling down. He recovered himself.
“Here's some flowers for you,” he said, taking a bunch of daffodils from the desk. “Daffy-down-dillies, as the poets call 'em. Lovely flowers, hey? Now comes in the sweet of the year. What ho!”
He advanced toward her, and for one extraordinary moment she thought he was about to chuck her under the chin.
“Ask Mr. Foster to come in,” he said.
“Mr. Veal,” she said, nervously, “there's just one thing—I wanted to ask you about, my salary, don't you think, er, I think, it seems to me about time I had a raise. I've been here——”